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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187613">all I mean is that I love you (and maybe I always will)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere'>lettersfromnowhere</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Waiting Game [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Introspection, Love Confessions, Resolving Loose Ends from 'Give the Game Away', The Waiting Game-verse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:53:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a few years for Gyatso to realize that he's made a rather critical error. (Or: the resolution of the otherwise-unresolved Gyatso/Sana subplot from "Give the Game Away.")</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gyatso Oyama/Sana (The Waiting Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Waiting Game [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867837</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>all I mean is that I love you (and maybe I always will)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Oyamas move out of the Fire Nation palace on a damp Autumn morning, and Gyatso is almost glad to see it go. For twenty years, every memory he's made has been set against the backdrop of the palace, save for the rare occasions on which he was able to accompany his father to the Air Temples, and he's all too eager to forget. He knows that, realistically, he will, but if he never walks the halls in which his sister died again, or sits on the steps of the shrine where he'd fallen for a girl he shouldn't have, he thinks he'll be happy. </p><p><em>Thinks</em> being the operative word. </p><p>They move to the country to live as an obscure a life as the Avatar and his family possibly can. His father can't retire as his mother did, so she accompanies him on his travels; Gyatso, usually, stays home. It's sometimes boring, but it's peaceful in a way that a palace full of every imaginable luxury and eight boisterous children, now only seven (the thought makes his stomach twist) and all grown up, never was. He meditates on the veranda, tries his hand at gardening, writes to his sisters - both biological and adopted - every so often. Izumi's letters are few and far between as she prepares for her wedding, and Gyatso is fine with that; all the more reason to move on. </p><p>He has, almost completely. He'll always admit her, but he's distanced himself enough to feel ashamed of his idiocy in dealing with his longtime crush, and he'd like few things more than to wipe it from his memory. (He'd thought a profuse apology to both the Princess and her fiancé would do the trick. It had not.) </p><p>Yuna writes often, though, and Gyatso finds himself missing her. He and Yuna were never particularly close, both preferring Yangchen to each other, but with the recognition of their being the only two remaining Oyama siblings has come a renewed closeness. She talks almost incessantly of her infant son, and she's eager to note even the most mundane accomplishments of the Air Acolytes, for whom she feels a near-equal maternal protectiveness. He finds comfort in the small celebrations she shares with him, and he writes back about the vegetables he's learning to cultivate, because he really has little else to talk about and it seems fitting. He's finding himself rather talented at getting rare varieties of beet-potatoes to grown in soil that should not be able to support them, and he's got so little else to occupy his time that he's rather preoccupied with them. </p><p>(He should probably move out, he realizes, and find a job, but he has no earthly idea what that might entail, and he thinks it might kill his father if his last remaining child in the house were to move out, so he does not.)  </p><p>And his correspondences are not limited to Yuna's and, occasionally, Izumi's letters. Kya never writes, as one might expect. She has baby Xinyi to worry about, and she scarcely spoke to any of the Oyamas except for Yangchen as a child. But Sakari writes often; she's the one princess he'd never have expected to strike up a regular correspondence with, and yet he does. Her letters are side-splittingly funny, and even though he suspects that humor might simply be Saki's preferred coping mechanism and the comedic tone of her letters a way of avoiding her grief over Yangchen's death (and she admits, in one letter, that it is more profound than anyone might assume), he appreciates it nonetheless. It puts him on the offensive, makes him wish he could match her wit; Gyatso has never, ever been funny, but he wants to try, for the first time in his life. If Izumi taught him how to build an enduring friendship out of the ashes of a truly disastrous teenage crush, Saki's teaching him that the constant seriousness he attempts to maintain...well, might just be wildly overrated.</p><p>And then there are Sana's letters. </p><p>Gyatso's been fairly certain that the youngest Fire Nation heir has...some sort of feelings for him for a while now. It was evident in the hope in her wide golden eyes when she spoke to him before his sister's death; in the way she walked the halls with him afterwards, late into the night, clinging to his arm; in the way she held him just a little too long when they took their leave of each other; in the tenderness with which she describes the way she misses him. Sana, now eighteen, has always been too earnest for her own good, a heart-on-her-sleeve girl in a world which prefers that hearts be kept tidily tucked away in chests, and she cannot hide anything. Gyatso knows that he's probably not reading too much into Sana's letters, but what's more confusing is how he's supposed to react. </p><p>It feels like a cop-out, thinking of one sister that way when another had monopolized his attention for so long. But he can't help but entertain the thought. After all, Sana has always been a dear friend, and it was she who stood beside him longest in the wake of Yangchen's death; she has grown stunningly beautiful in her young adulthood, and she has the gentlest heart he's ever encountered in spite of her stubbornness. He'd have to be a bit pigheaded not to consider the idea of returning her feelings. But he contents himself, for the time being, with returning only her letters, and though he finds himself awaiting hers even more eagerly than he anticipates reading Sakari's, he tells himself to think nothing of it. </p><p>This is an excellent plan, and one that works out splendidly until Izumi's wedding. </p><hr/><p>Sana has missed the formerly-constant presence of the Oyama family dearly in the past year, and the excitement of their arrival nearly eclipses that of her sister's wedding in her eyes. She's waiting for them when they arrive, and she runs to them the moment Appa touches down in the courtyard. She throws her arms around the Avatar with absolutely no regard for propriety, hastily bows to the former Spymistress (she does not do hugs), and then turns to Gyatso. </p><p>Meeting his lopsided smile, Sana thinks her heart is going to burst. </p><p>"Hi, Gyatso," she says, a little shy, and he doesn't even respond before he pulls her in for a lingering hug.</p><p>"Hey, Sana," he murmurs, his chin brushing her shoulder as he speaks, and she cannot help the shudder that runs up the length of her spine when he speaks in her ear. She hopes he can't feel it but knows he probably can. "It's been a while." </p><p>"Too long," she agrees, and she only lets go when Hina clears her throat. Nevertheless, Sana, emboldened, takes his hand as they mount the stairs, and though Gyatso looks down at it in shock for a moment before he can move, he doesn't pull away. </p><p>Sana counts that as a victory. </p><hr/><p>Gyatso realizes with dread about two days into his family's extended visit to the palace that ignoring his increasingly-conflicted feelings about Sana is going to be a thousand times harder here than it ever was at home. Sana is affectionate in the extreme - with her parents, with her sisters, with her little niece and nephew, with his father, with Gyatso himself - and every time she leans on his shoulder, or presses close to him while they sit together (they've done it often since he arrived), he finds it harder and harder not to convince himself that he's...amenable to the idea of sharing with Sana what he once wanted with Izumi. He hates himself a little bit for it, and Izumi tracks him down for a Very Firm Talk about her sister approximately two minutes after he and his family arrive, but he cannot easily ignore the gentle warmth that's been simmering between himself and the youngest princess.</p><p>(It's not quite a spark, but it's something good.) </p><p>And at Izumi's wedding...well. </p><p>He's a goner the moment he sees the elaborately-embroidered aubergine hanfu she's wearing to the ceremony. The Fire Lord and Lady have never favored elaborate clothes, preferring the money they cost be better spent, but no expense has been spared for the Crown Princess' wedding, and Gyatso privately thinks that their youngest daughter outshines the rest by miles. The deep purple of her gown is stunning against her copper skin, and even her eyes seem to be smiling as she embraces her newly-married sister. In a reversal of fate that he's sure Izumi would laugh at if she could, it's all Gyatso can do not to stare openly at Sana, completely ignoring the bride. </p><p>His heart is firmly lodged in his throat by the time the floor opens and he asks Sana for the first dance. </p><p>"Of course!" she says, her eyes lighting up as she takes his extended hand and he leads her to the floor. She bites her lip in concentration as they whirl around each other in the familiar steps of a dance they've known since childhood, and when it ends, she turns to him, biting her lip again - this time sheepishly. When she thanks him for the dance, eyes cast shyly to the floor, he can't take it anymore. </p><p>"No, thank you," he says emphatically, and he knows she can't possibly miss his meaning. </p><p>Sure enough, she looks up at him questioningly and asks, "can we...go somewhere a little less crowded?" </p><p>"Um. Sure," Gyatso stammers, his nerves suddenly shot as he leads her out onto a balcony that no one's using. "Uh...what's up?"</p><p>"You tell me," she says, eyes wide and expression earnest, not a hint of teasing in a word she says. </p><p>"Um. Oh, okay." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "I'm, um, just..." He can't even form words, he's finding, and he hates the feeling. "Do you like me?" </p><p>Sana, suddenly, looks more nervous than anticipative, and she glances out into the middle distance. "Depends on who's asking," she says almost guiltily. </p><p>"Hey, no," he murmurs, reaching out to touch her shoulder and turn her with courage he didn't know he had. "I'm...I'm asking because..."</p><p>"Because?"</p><p>"Because I think...I think I might, um..." he scratches the back of his neck. "Like you. A little bit." </p><p>Sana stares at Gyatso for a moment, and then she leans forwards and into him so abruptly and with so little warning that he nearly pitches backwards over the railing before a hand at his waist steadies him and warm, awkward lips meet his. They're gone as quickly as they'd come, but for a moment after Sana kisses him, he simply stands there, staring.</p><p>Then his brain resumes its normal function. </p><p>"Sana?" he asks, his voice wobbly. </p><p>"Y-yeah?" </p><p>"Can I...can I do that again?" </p><p>Sana's downcast eyes snap up to meet his and she nods eagerly, not saying a word. This time, it is slow; he reaches out to cup her cheeks, and though he's not exactly an experienced kisser, he thinks he does all right if the way she snuggles into his arms is any indication, or the way she gazes up at him when she lets go. </p><p>She doesn't say anything - Sana's too shy for pretty words and too romantic to risk inane ones after her first kiss, so she stays quiet. </p><p>"Did I do okay?" he asks nervously after an unbearable moment of silence.</p><p>"Mm-hm," she murmurs, nodding, and when he opens his arms to her, she gratefully wraps herself up in his embrace, resting her chin on his shoulder. </p><p>"I think I missed you more than I realized," he admits, and she nuzzles her cheek against his shoulder. </p><p>"You should've seen me," Sana says softly. "Saki wouldn't stop teasing me because I waited on the steps for the couriers to bring the mail almost every afternoon." </p><p>"You...did?"</p><p>"Waiting for your letters," Sana tells him. </p><p>"Sana..." </p><p>"But you're here now," she concludes, and when she finally pulls back, her golden eyes are molten-warm. </p><p>"I am." He's a little too shy to cup her chin, but his hands at her waist seem to do the trick. </p><p>The irony, of course, dawns on him quite a bit later. </p>
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